There is a war being waged on our happiness. It is important to understand that we are in this war and who we are fighting. The little voice inside of us will help us win the war on the matrix (advertising, billboards, peer pressures ...).

Haiku:

the questions you have

can be answered by the voice

the voice always knows

The WAR on your Happiness -- the VOICE (your inner voice) vs. the MATRIX

Hello -- Marc again with the Gunnar Project. I want to talk to you about another foundational component of the Gunnar Project. This component really deals with the war on happiness -- like it or not, there is a massive war right now being waged on your happiness.

I think the best way to describe this is to sort of describe the two adversaries in this war. I think one of the adversaries is something that all of us have -- each one of us, and this is that little voice inside of you, this little voice that tells you the right things you should be doing. You know that you all have it, and when we take time to listen to the voice, the voice really directs us in those directions, you know, it tells us to slow down, and spend some time with my family, and do my homework on time, and maybe get up a little early, maybe not drink so much, maybe not eat so many Big Mac hamburgers. You know -- it tells us all these little things those voices constantly, this conversation is constantly in the back of your head. And I know that you know it.

The problem with the voice is, the voice is a little teeny tiny voice. It’s not very loud. It’s sort of always there, but there are a lot of times where we just don’t listen to it very well, or we sort of just choose to ignore it. So all of us have this voice inside of us -- the voice doesn’t really have any gray area either, right? The voice always know exactly what direction -- should I do this or should I do this? -- if you take time and ask the voice, the voice always knows exactly which way you should do it. And we don’t always choose to follow that.

On the other side of this equation, is something that I’m going to call the matrix. And just like in the movie, the matrix is this machine -- it’s this big huge machine. It’s hundreds of millions of dollars every year that are spent in all kinds of different technologies and billboards and all kinds of different things that try to tell us that we don’t have enough, we need to make more money, we need to have cooler jeans, we need to drive a cooler car, we need to live in a bigger house, we’re sort of ugly so we need to spend a bunch of money on making ourselves more pretty.

This matrix is out there and is just constantly hammering us with all this noise -- and it’s everywhere! It’s when we wake up, we jump on our phone and there it is in facebook, showing us all the beautiful people and the great places they travel, and it’s all the noise when you’re driving to work, or it’s just all this stuff that’s constantly hammering you, and the matrix is super loud, right?! If you don’t take a chance to take a step back, you never hear the little voice inside of your head that says “eh, maybe that’s not that great of an idea...”.

The more that the matrix, the more volume that it turns up, the more it sort of drowns out what should be happening, and the things you should be doing, according to the voice that’s inside of you. Right?

The most dangerous thing about the matrix is when you don’t understand that the matrix is working with you. The advertisements and the way that they’re getting into your head is incredible, and if you don’t understand this, if you watch a TV commercial and you just get all wrapped up and you go “man, that’d be so cool... if I had that car, people would think I was awesome...” -- if you get wrapped up in that, you’re losing the battle... you’re losing the war!

You have to realize that this is just not reality. What happens after you buy that really cool car? What happens after you buy that really cool pair of jeans? You have it for maybe a week, or a month or something, and then it loses it’s appeal and then you’re looking for the next thing... you’re looking for the next pair of jeans or really cool shoes or something.

The whole point of it is: none of that is going to make you happy. It gives you a little -- little happy shots for a little moment, but it’s the bigger things in life... it’s the happiness like we talked about before -- it’s the pursuit of happiness, not these little shots of happy that you’re really looking for.

So again, we’re in the middle of this war, and the war is sort of driven by the voice, which you should be listening to, that’s going to lead you down this journey and on this path of really finding true happiness -- on the other side of it -- what we’re fighting against is the matrix and all of the stuff in the advertisements, and the billboards, and the TV, and the ads you have on your phone -- all this stuff that’s trying to drown out the voice and trying to have you make poor decisions. We need to engage in this war. We need to engage and win this on happiness.

Again -- Marc with Gunnar Project, look forward to talking with you again soon. Thank you much! Bye.